i know some of you guys are hunters so though i would share what i read on fb today
https://www.facebook.com/4wdtv/posts/546625428708598
a message from antonio lara...a passionate hunter and archer...
Hello people.there is a stack going on and i just thought i would lay out a heap of facts as the media is having it all one way and people are not being informed of what is truly going and what we are facing here in nsw. Have a read and see what you think. It is a fair bit of reading, but it isn't a lot when you think what is at stake.
Facts on the game council demise and what it means for us as bowhunters
recent undertakings by the nsw government have seen sweeping changes to our hunting rights taken from us in one foul swoop. When i say foul, i really mean it in the smelliest of undertones.
In all of this, we have lost, forever for now, the nsw game council. A statutory body that was set up to allow and manage hunting on public land. There are many theories out there as to why this demise came about, but make no mistake, it was all about dirty politics and nothing else that has bought about its undoing.
Here are some facts.
The chairman of the game council did not even get a look at the dunn report until the minister’s chief of staff sent it to him 45 minutes after the game council was abolished. This did not even give the very people it affected a chance to see the report before it was used against them in order to have them all lose not only their jobs, but all our rights to hunt public land. Just to rub salt into the wound, the sydney morning herald had the announcement on their website 15 minutes after it was made, meaning they either have a super typist/journalist and web administrator, or the whole sordid affair was a coordinated assault that was very underhanded.
The game council budget was $2.56 million per year plus license fees, the lowest of any department and it was the most efficient government department there ever was, or probably ever will be returning a public benefit of $2.36 for every one dollar of government money. Game licensing began in victoria in 1959 and to date has around 40,000 licenses, gc began selling license 7 years ago and is at 20000, a remarkable performance. The lhpa councilor on the game council stated it costs them an average of $5000 per wild dog killed and that means that the 984 wild dogs killed by r licensed hunters in the last 12 months alone would have paid for the gc budget alone, go figure that.
The gc was audited every year by the auditor general and it received a clean bill of health every year, yet it was taken down as inefficient. The real truth was that it was putting a lot of people to shame with its efficiency. Basically the gc was the victim of its own success and the government is growing fearful of the growth that hunting has shown in the past 7 years and the real threat that the vote from hunters is starting show just how powerful we are becoming as a community. If the gc were audited as a private agency, they would have passed with flying colours on all matters.
The actions of the councilors who were caught out had nothing to do with its demise.
Nsw leads the rest of australia by a mile in terms of growth of hunters.
The gc saw an annual increase in the number of feral animals removed with the figures for the last 12 months being 25000 dead animals on public land and 1.2 million dead on private land from its 20000 volunteer licensed hunters.
The npws, who i will emphasise have openly come out and stated that they want to all forms of recreational hunting banned, reportedly spent $18million on culling ferals in the past year. They have no report on numbers taken, but it would be way lower than what we have taken. When they do their 1080 drops, they just shovel it out of a plane and do not go back to see what they have killed. No doubt, both native and feral species are wiped in these drops, yet no one is held accountable or do they have to report on what they have achieved.
Barry o’farrell has come down very hard on bowhunters and the word is that we have been banned from national park culling and possibly from public land hunting at this stage on grounds of cruelty. No consultation has taken place, so we really need to get together to get stuck into them and let them know the bull crap that someone has obviously told them that has obviously come from people with no bowhunting background. The word on o’farrell is that he is basically a very ‘untrustworthy’ man.
Hunting in australia is worth $2.25b, yes that is billion, dollars every year, and yet the biggest growth mechanism for that economy has been wiped with no recourse.
There are 200000 licensed gun owners out there and this does not include the numbers of bowhunters, 4wders, doggers, fishos etc. So we have a very significant number we represent and together we can make a huge difference.
The people in the gc, or new dpi, are now classed as public servants, meaning they cannot work outside of 6am to 10pm weekdays, meaning that when the current trial for public land hunting takes place, which they will want to drive through in state forests when and if they are reopened, we will only be allowed to hunt within those times, which means you cannot hunt outside them, including weekends. What a load of crap that is.
Gc hunters injected over $100million annually into rural nsw as a direct result of people using public land to hunt. Already towns are complaining that they are losing a lot of business and a loss of income into rural towns means a loss of people, which then leads to a loss in services and the cycle continues on. Hunters are good for our rural land and townships and that is all there is to it. There are1000 jobs in rural nsw that are directly linked to gc public land hunting.
The gc undertook the biggest animal disease monitoring program ever run in australia and most likely the world. People returning from hunts with reports of odd issues with game they shot led to a lot of work being undertaken to prevent the spread of disease that would normally have gone unchecked.
At a conference in canberra scientists from parts of the usa and europe took this program back to their respective countries and modeled it and have adopted it as best practice over there. There were so many duck samples handed in from gc shooters that the laboratory processing the samples could not keep up. At the time it was the largest surveillance program of wild birds in response to bird flu anywhere in the world.
Remember this also. The npws model is not hunting and don’t be fooled by their vitriol. In their model, all animals have to be left on the ground, as they do not allow for the taking of meat, skin or antlers in their culling programs. The moment meat is taken, it becomes a hunting program and this they do not allow. It is the same with their duck shooting programs, where despite overseas research clearly proving that the use of decoys and callers increases the number of birds killed, thereby reducing the damage to crops and it also brings the ducks closer, improving recognition of species and reducing the numbers of protected species shot. Also because the birds are closer, it reduces wounding rates. They, decoys that is, are banned however because their use makes it a hunting program not a culling program . All kill and all waste. No hunter in his or her right mind would want that to happen.
Make no mistake, the npws have stated and shown enough to prove they want to get rid of all hunting and there is definitely work that has already been done that has seen bowhunting and black powder ousted from the government plans.
Forestry nsw, who let us into the state forests, are definitely our ally and want to see us return to what we already had as a very easy to manage and cost effective model of animal management. We literally saved them $2.4m alone per year in managing the task of taking feral animals out.
Hunting is currently suspended in state forests and hopefully it will be reinstated soon. In the now defunct national parks hunting plan that the shooters and fishers and gc had put together, there was going to be approx. 150000 hectares set aside for bowhunting only on safety grounds. This would have been a serious shot in the arm for bowhunting, but is now lost to us. This is just one of the things we have sorely missed out on at this point.
We need to emphasise that bowhunting is our cultural pursuit and the reason why we do it. We are quiet, extremely safe and very effective and do not allow anyone to tell you any different.
There has been no proof given that hunting on public land did not work even though there was a stack of evidence that it did. The gc hunter education program was the biggest program ever run in the southern hemisphere.
We basically need to get what we had in terms of public land hunting, as there is no evidence at all to say we shouldn’t otherwise.
Bowhunting, according to the state government, is currently not being looked at as a form of hunting that can be utilised with its new modeling, which will really not benefit any citizen of the community in any case. However, this is a very real, threat to what we love and if we do not make a stand now then we will forever be kicking ourselves in the guts for letting this happen without a fight.
There is plenty going on and there are plenty of moves being made to ensure that we can protect our future. We all need to be very proactive and we can no longer sit back and hope someone else is going to step up. Updates will be given and actions will be planned.
I can’t emphasise enough the need for urgency and all hands on deck. Banned is the word they used and if they can come out and say we are banned on public land, then what’s to say they can’t say the same for private?
i know some of you guys are hunters so though i would share what i read on fb today